By ZACH SCHONBRUN

March 18, 2013

If the only remarkable element of the N.C.A.A. men’s tournament bracket was its parity, the opposite is true for the women’s bracket, revealed Monday, with all roads leading again to Baylor, the Goliath out of the Big 12 that has lost once in two seasons.

The Bears (32-1), who won the title last season to cap a perfect season, enter the tournament with a 30-game winning streak, following a loss, 71-69, to Stanford on Nov. 16 that momentarily shook the women’s basketball landscape.

That loss, which ended a 42-game winning streak, did not lead to a shift of the nation’s reigning powers, however. The top four seeds were the same as last year, with Notre Dame, Connecticut and Stanford following Baylor’s lead.

The remaining question is whether any team can upset center Brittney Griner and the Lady Bears, such prohibitive favorites that the hashtag “BaylorvsField” on Twitter was promoted on ESPN’s telecast.

Whereas the men’s bracket looked devoid of a dominant team, or even those that most could confidently pen into their Final Four picks, the women’s bracket suffers from its top-heaviness, with upsets and underdogs much harder to find.

“We’ve still got a little ways to grow there,” said St. John’s Coach Joe Tartamella, whose Red Storm earned a 10th seed. “If you ask a stranger on the street if they have a top four teams on the women’s side, they could probably name those programs. Once you get past that, I don’t know.”

Griner and Baylor are confident in their chances at a third title in four years. When asked if there was any team that she believed could pose a challenge, Griner smiled and said the Miami Heat.

“They’re the only team that could take us down,” Griner told ESPN.

Connecticut, a perennial contender under Coach Geno Auriemma, had a relatively quiet season, losing three times to Notre Dame and once to Baylor, 76-70, on Feb. 18. But the Huskies are rarely out of the Final Four picture. They earned a No. 1 seed for the seventh year in a row.

Notre Dame has suddenly usurped Connecticut as the top team out of the Big East, having advanced to last year’s title game. The Irish snapped a remarkable streak of 19 consecutive seasons in which UConn won either the Big East regular-season or tournament title.

“It’s done — now it’s just time to play the games,” the Notre Dame senior guard Skylar Diggins said on ESPN. “We’re excited about the opportunity to do the same thing we did last year, but finish.”

Stanford center Chiney Ogwumike, overlooked offensively coming into the season, emerged as an all-around player of the year candidate, averaging 22.4 points and 13.1 rebounds.

There are certain surprises that could emerge, such as Texas A&M, coming off a Southeastern Conference title. And Delaware, a No. 6 seed led by one of the country’s most prolific scorers, Elena Delle Donne, has momentum, having won 25 consecutive games out of the Colonial Athletic Conference. Delle Donne finished second in the nation in scoring (25.3 points per game) this season, the third time in her career she has finished among the top three.

If the bracket looks similar to how it was laid out last season, that is because seven of the top eight teams were seeded identically to how they fell last season. California was the exception.

“We know the first couple lines look similar,” Carolayne Henry, the committee chairwoman, said on ESPN. “However we want to maintain the integrity of the bracket.”

She added, “When we place our teams in the bracket, we place them in team order,” meaning that they are ranked from 1 to 64 and laid out from there. It just so happens that not much has changed in a year.

Said ESPN analyst Mechelle Voepel: “There is sort of the déjà vu feeling.”

Correction: March 18, 2013

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction: An earlier version of this story misspelled the first name of Baylor’s center. Her name is Brittney Griner, not Brittany.